Emotion understanding and the moral self-concept as motivators of prosocial behavior in middle childhood

Understanding of the functions of forgiveness among preschoolers

Forgiveness plays an important role in restoring and maintaining cooperative relationships. Previous studies have demonstrated that young children could forgive transgressors both as a third party and as a victim. However, the research on young children's understanding of forgiveness is scant. This study focused on the two main functions of forgiveness-the restoration of a damaged relationship between the victim and the transgressor and the positive emotional change in the victim toward the transgressor. In this study, 48 4-year-olds (25 girls), 50 5-year-olds (21 girls), and 50 6-year-olds (21 girls) in Japan heard stories in which a victim either did or did not forgive a transgressor. They answered questions about the relationship between the victim and the transgressor and the victim's feelings toward the transgressor. Regarding the restoration of a damaged relationship, 4- to 6-year-olds understood that the restoration could occur in the presence of forgiveness. Yet, 6-year-olds showed more distinctive belief than 4- and 5-year-olds that the damaged relationship remains unrestored without forgiveness from the victim. For emotional changes, 6-year-olds understood that the forgiving victim would experience positive emotional changes, whereas the unforgiving victim would not. However, 4- and 5-year-olds expected positive emotional changes even without forgiveness, although they anticipated greater changes after forgiveness. The results show that the understanding of the important functions of forgiveness is present at 4 years of age and matures by 6 years of age. Children may develop a sophisticated understanding of the functions of forgiveness later than the actual forgiving behavior.

Sharing and Allocation in Preschool Children: The Roles of Theory of Mind, Anticipated Emotions, and Consequential Emotions

This study investigates the impact of theory of mind, anticipated emotions before actual behavior, and consequential emotions following the behavior on sharing and allocation behavior in 4-6-year-old children. In Experiment 1, 95 children were randomly assigned to three conditions (external emotion expectancy condition, internal emotion expectancy condition, and control condition) to explore the role of cognition and emotions in children's sharing and allocation behaviors. Experiment 2 employed a dictator game to further validate the influence of theory of mind and consequential emotions on behavior. The findings indicated that both anticipated and consequential emotions influence sharing behavior, but neither serves as a key predictor of allocation behavior. Theory of mind influences children's sharing behavior and is related to the fairness of allocation. Children with higher levels of theory of mind tend to rate consequential emotions more positively, while those with lower ratings of consequential emotions are more likely to reconsider sharing after reflection. Notably, theory of mind and emotional factors demonstrate distinct motivational effects on children's prosocial sharing and resource allocation, with negative emotions exhibiting a more pronounced impact on decision-making processes.

Exploring Moderation Dynamics: Callous-Unemotional Traits, Parental Practices and Conduct Problems in Juvenile Delinquency

INTRODUCTION

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits, parental practices and conduct problems (CP) have been consistently identified across numerous studies as significant predictors of the severity and persistence of juvenile delinquency.

AIMS

This study seeks to investigate the moderation dynamics underlying the relationships between these variables among Arab incarcerated youth. Specifically, the study aims to (1) explore whether parental practices moderate the relationship between CU traits and CP among incarcerated youth in Jordan and (2) examine the bidirectional moderating influence of CU traits in shaping the dynamic relationship between parental practices and CP within the context of Arab juvenile delinquency.

METHODS

An observational survey design was employed, gathering data from 184 incarcerated youth across 11 rehabilitation centres in Jordan. Latent profile analysis identified three parental practice classes: more positive, balanced and more negative.

RESULTS

Moderation analyses indicated significant associations between CU traits, parental practices and CP. Parental practices, especially positive ones, moderated the relationship between CU traits and CP, highlighting the protective influence of balanced parenting. Furthermore, bidirectional moderation effects were observed: CU traits moderated the link between parental practices and CP, while CP influenced parenting practices, particularly in the presence of elevated CU traits.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

The findings of this study underscore the vital role mental health nurses can play in addressing the behavioural and psychological challenges faced by youth involved in the justice system and their families. Specifically, mental health nurses can aid in ameliorating mental distress by supporting parents in understanding and managing CU traits and CP. Nurses can provide targeted educational programmes that empower parents with strategies to reinforce positive parenting practices and reduce negative interactions. Furthermore, nurses can facilitate access to community resources and therapy options, helping families build a supportive environment conducive to the mental well-being of the youth. These interventions are crucial not only for the direct treatment of juveniles but also in providing holistic support to their families, thereby enhancing the overall efficacy of mental health care in juvenile delinquency.

RELEVANCE TO MENTAL HEALTH NURSING

This study highlights the essential role that mental health nurses play in managing behavioural issues among youth, emphasising the significance of implementing culturally sensitive interventions. Mental health nurses possess a pivotal position in early detection and intervention, which enables them to guide families in fostering positive parenting practices, essential for preventing delinquent behaviours. Their efforts to promote understanding and responsiveness within family dynamics make a significant contribution to the mental well-being of individuals, highlighting the necessity of their role in global mental health.

I help, therefore, I am? - A registered report on longitudinal inter-relations of the three-dimensional moral self-concept and prosocial behaviours in preschool children

Children's moral self-concept (MSC) has been proposed to relate to prosocial behaviour. However, systematic assessments of their inter-relations are scarce. Therefore, this longitudinal study investigated the development, structure and inter-relation of prosocial behaviours and the MSC in childhood, using three measurement points at ages 4, 5 and 6 years. We assessed children's MSC and helping, sharing and comforting behaviours in a laboratory setting. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a three-dimensional MSC structure at 5 and 6 years, but not at 4 years. There was inconsistent stability across time points regarding prosocial behaviour and MSC. For the comforting domain, but not the other domains, cross-lagged relations between self-concept and behaviour were present. Moreover, helping behaviour and self-concept were inter-related at 6 years. Results provide support for reciprocal associations between MSC and prosocial behaviour, albeit only in the comforting domain. They highlight the importance of distinguishing between types of prosocial behaviour and corresponding dimensions of the self-concept, as different developmental trajectories and associations emerge.

Cognitive empathy boosts honesty in children and young adolescents

Children and young adolescents often tend to behave dishonestly in order to serve their self-interests. This study focused on how empathic abilities affect children's tendency to deceive others. Deception is the act of causing others to form a false belief to get them to act in a way that serves the deceiver's interests. As such, it requires the ability to predict how others might use the provided information. In two experiments, 274 participants (aged 10-16 years) played a game in which they could send a deceptive message to another participant to boost their own payoff at the other player's expense. We measured participants' cognitive and emotional empathy using different measures. We found that a measure of cognitive empathy, namely the fantasy scale, was associated with less deception of another player when that other player was not identified and was presented only as "Player B." However, when Player B was identified by name, empathy did not predict deception. In such cases, the only factors affecting deception rates were the gain for the participant (higher possible gains lead to more deception) and loss to the other player (higher possible losses lead to less deception). Overall, the findings suggest that even by 11 years of age, children can understand the impact of their unethical behavior on another child and adjust their actions accordingly. However, when the other child is not identified, children need to possess high levels of cognitive empathy toward imagined individuals to resist the temptation to deceive the other child.

Self-concept mediates the relationships between childhood traumatic experiences and adolescent depression in both clinical and community samples

BACKGROUND

Childhood trauma is a pivotal risk factor for adolescent depression. While the association between childhood trauma and depression is well-established, the mediating role of self-concept has not been acknowledged. Specifically, limited attention has been paid to how childhood maltreatment impacts adolescent depression through physical and social self-concept, both in clinical and community samples. This study aims to investigate how distinct and cumulative childhood trauma affects adolescent depression, as well as the potential mediating role of self-concept in their relationships.

METHODS

We recruited 227 depressed adolescents (dataset 1, 45 males, age = 15.34 ± 1.96) and 574 community adolescents (dataset 2, 107 males, age = 16.79 ± 0.65). Each participant was assessed on five subtypes of childhood trauma severity, cumulative trauma index, physical and social self-concept, and depression. Mediation models were tested separately in the clinical and community samples.

RESULTS

Clinically depressed adolescents experienced a higher level of trauma severity, a greater number of trauma subtypes, and had lower levels of physical and social self-concept compared to community adolescents. Analyses on childhood trauma severity and cumulative trauma index jointly indicated that physical and social self-concept played mediation roles in the relationships between childhood trauma experiences and depression. Moreover, the mediating effects of self-concept were stronger in depressed adolescents when compared to community samples.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that physical and social self-concept play mediating roles in the pathway linking childhood trauma and adolescent depression, particularly in clinically depressed individuals.

Activity increases in empathy-related brain regions when children contribute to peers' sadness and happiness

Responding empathically when causing peers' emotions is critical to children's interpersonal functioning, yet there are surprising gaps in the literature. Previous research has focused on empathy when witnessing others' emotions instead of causing others' emotions, on negative emotions instead of positive emotions, and on behavioral correlates instead of neural correlates. In this study, children (N = 38; Mage = 9.28 years; 50% female) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging block design task in which they played a rigged game where they won and lost coins for themselves or peers and viewed their peers' happiness and sadness. We used a region of interest approach to test whether activity in brain regions associated with positive and negative empathy in adults showed significantly greater activity in each condition (i.e., when children won and lost tokens for themselves and peers) compared with a fixation baseline. We predicted that experiencing self-conscious emotions, such as pride and guilt, would heighten the experience of empathy. Activity in the amygdala, which is associated with visceral arousal, and in the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which are associated with integrated arousal, increased significantly when winning and losing for oneself and peers and observing their resulting happy and sad facial expressions. Activity did not differ when playing for oneself versus peers, indicating that self-conscious emotions do not heighten empathy and instead support similar neural processes underlying firsthand and secondhand (empathic) emotions. These findings support that empathy during middle childhood involves the same brain regions as empathy during adulthood and that children experience firsthand and secondhand positive and negative emotions in similar ways.

I help, therefore, I am?-longitudinal interrelations of the three-dimensional moral self-concept and prosocial behaviours in 4-6-year-old children

Children's moral self-concept (MSC) has been proposed to relate to prosocial behaviour. However, systematic assessments of their interrelations are scarce. The current study examines the early development, structure, stability and interrelation of three key prosocial behaviours and the corresponding dimensions of the moral self-concept. To this end, we use a longitudinal approach with three measurement points during the preschool years at ages 4, 5 and 6 years. We assess three prosocial dimensions of children's MSC through a puppet-interview. In addition, behavioural measures of children's helping, sharing and comforting were administered in a laboratory setting. By examining the longitudinal associations between MSC and prosocial behaviours, this study will provide valuable insights into the complex nature of prosocial development in early childhood.

Promoting Empathy and Affiliation in Relationships (PEAR) study: protocol for a longitudinal study investigating the development of early childhood callous-unemotional traits

INTRODUCTION

Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits are at high lifetime risk of antisocial behaviour. Low affiliation (ie, social bonding difficulties) and fearlessness (ie, low threat sensitivity) are proposed risk factors for CU traits. Parenting practices (eg, harshness and low warmth) also predict risk for CU traits. However, few studies in early childhood have identified attentional or physiological markers of low affiliation and fearlessness. Moreover, no studies have tested whether parenting practices are underpinned by low affiliation or fearlessness shared by parents, which could further shape parent-child interactions and exacerbate risk for CU traits. Addressing these questions will inform knowledge of how CU traits develop and isolate novel parent and child targets for future specialised treatments for CU traits.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

The Promoting Empathy and Affiliation in Relationships (PEAR) study aims to establish risk factors for CU traits in children aged 3-6 years. The PEAR study will recruit 500 parent-child dyads from two metropolitan areas of the USA. Parents and children will complete questionnaires, computer tasks and observational assessments, alongside collection of eye-tracking and physiological data, when children are aged 3-4 (time 1) and 5-6 (time 2) years. The moderating roles of child sex, race and ethnicity, family and neighbourhood disadvantage, and parental psychopathology will also be assessed. Study aims will be addressed using structural equation modelling, which will allow for flexible characterisation of low affiliation, fearlessness and parenting practices as risk factors for CU traits across multiple domains.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

Ethical approval was granted by Boston University (#6158E) and the University of Pennsylvania (#850638). Results will be disseminated through conferences and open-access publications. All study and task materials will be made freely available on lab websites and through the Open Science Framework (OSF).

What Mediates the Effect of Family Disruption in the COVID-19 Pandemic on Children’s Prosocial Behavior

Abstract. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented social distancing rules (including mass school closures) dramatically constrained children’s social lives, jeopardizing human connections that foster prosocial development. This study of 2,516 families of 3–8-year-olds from six countries (China, Sweden, Australia, Italy, the USA, and the United Kingdom) examined whether children’s understanding or feelings about COVID-19 regulations mediated the expected association between COVID-19-related family disruption and children’s prosocial behavior, as indexed by parental ratings. For all six sites, family disruption indirectly predicted reduced prosocial behavior. Negative feelings about COVID-19 regulations mediated this association in all sites except China. Contrariwise, understanding of COVID-19 regulations was not implicated in the link between family disruption and reduced prosocial behavior.

Moral content influences facial emotion processing development during early-to-middle childhood

Facial emotions are often processed in light of moral information, which can assist in predicting and interpreting the intentions of another. Neurophysiological measures of facial emotion processing (FEP) may be sensitive to moral content. Relatively little is known, however, about the relationship between moral content and FEP during early-to-middle childhood, and how this relationship may change across development. Eighty-four children aged 4-12 years completed a task assessing whether child faces primed within the moral harm/care domain influenced face sensitive event-related potentials (ERPs; N170 and LPP). Results demonstrated that N170 amplitude decreased with age for faces primed with positive moral content, whilst LPP amplitude decreased with age for faces primed with negative moral content. Collectively, this suggests that morally relevant content within the harm/care domain is integrated during the early stages of FEP in early-to-middle childhood. Moreover, stronger language ability was positively correlated with the LPP for fearful faces primed with negative moral content. Overall, findings provide novel evidence to suggest that FEP development may be modulated by moral content, and emotion-specific results may be influenced by language. Findings from this research highlight the complex relationship between broader social cognitive skills during child development.

Varieties of normative understanding and their relation to sharing behavior in preschool children

Children increasingly appreciate normative obligations and share resources across the preschool years. But the internal structure and behavioral relevance of normative expressions in the context of sharing-that is, the relation with children's own sharing behavior-remains disputed. Here, 4- to 6-year-old children (N = 90; 37 female) observed protagonists sharing or not sharing resources. As measures of normative expressions, children's evaluation, punishment acceptability, non-costly punishment, and costly punishment of the protagonists as well as their moral self-concept were assessed. To measure actual prosocial behavior, children had the possibility to share resources. A factor analysis revealed that the variety of normative expressions constitutes two distinct factors: normative representation (evaluation and hypothetical punishment) and norm enforcement (actual non-costly and costly punishment). Children's moral self-concept was the only normative expression that related to sharing behavior. Person-centered analyses suggest some consistency in individual differences across normative and prosocial development, with normative expressions and sharing behavior being aligned for some children on a low level and for some children on a high level. This study advances our understanding of early normative development and highlights the internal structure of normative stances during the preschool years.

Negative Physical Self-Concept Is Associated to Low Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Negative Lifestyle and Poor Mental Health in Chilean Schoolchildren

Background: Evidence suggests that physical self-concept (PSC) is linked to well-being in children and adolescents. Objective: The objective was to investigate the association of PSC with mental health (i.e., depression and body image), physical status (i.e., fitness and weight status) and lifestyle (physical activity (PA) patterns and nutritional level) in Chilean schoolchildren. Methods: A total of 617 schoolchildren (n = 271 girls and n = 346 boys) aged 10−14 years participated in this study. Self-concept, depression and body image dissatisfaction were determined by questionnaires. Physical fitness, PA, screen time (ST), Mediterranean diet (MD) adherence and anthropometric parameters were also included. Results: Poor PSC was linked to bad cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) (<42 VO2max) (OR 1.64; 95%CI 1.12−2.34; p = 0.01), severe body image dissatisfaction (OR 2.51, 95%CI 0.99−6.35; p = 0.05), ST of more than two hours a day (OR 2.1; 95%CI 1.41−3.12; p < 0.001), PA after school of no more than two hours per week (OR 1.52; 95%CI 1.08−2.13; p = 0.015) and depression (OR 1.80; 95%CI 1.1−2.92; p = 0.017). High nutritional level showed an association with general PSC and general self-concept (p < 0.05). Absence of body image dissatisfaction was related to general self-concept (p < 0.01) and physical condition dimensions (p < 0.05). Conclusions: PSC is associated with CRF, PA after school, ST and nutritional level. According to mental health variables, poor PSC is related to depression in Chilean schoolchildren. Therefore, promoting a healthy lifestyle among children should be a target of community- and school-based interventions to promote PSC.

How does the moral self-concept relate to prosocial behaviour? Investigating the role of emotions and consistency preference

The moral self-concept has been proposed as a central predictor of prosocial behaviour. In two experiments (one preregistered), we explored the nature of the relation between the moral self-concept (explicit and implicit) and prosocial behaviour. Specifically, we investigated the role of emotions associated with prosocial behaviour (consequential or anticipated) and preference for consistency. The results revealed a relation between the explicit moral self-concept and sharing behaviour. The explicit moral self-concept was linked to anticipated and consequential emotions regarding not-sharing. Importantly, anticipated and consequential emotions about not-sharing mediated the relation between self-concept and behaviour. Yet, the relation was independent of preference for consistency. The implicit moral self-concept was neither related to prosocial behaviour nor to emotions associated with behaviour. Overall, our study demonstrates the interplay between cognitive and emotional processes in explaining prosocial behaviour. More specific, it underlines the link between the moral self-concept and prosocial behaviour and highlights the role of emotions about the omission of prosocial behaviour.

Regret Now, Compensate It Later: The Benefits of Experienced Regret on Future Altruism

This article explores how experienced regret and relief evoked in a risky gambling task influence subsequent intertemporal pro-social behavior. We apply a dictator game experiment with delayed rewards to investigate the effect on donating behavior by simultaneously the time delay when the recipient accepts the donation and the emotions experienced by the participant. We examine this effect using a choice titration procedure. The results reveal that independent of the prior experienced emotions, participants’ donations decrease as the time delay rises; the hyperbolic model provides a better explanation of this finding. Significantly, experienced regret impacts the shape of the social discount function with delayed rewards, which is reflected in notably different discount rates. Participants who experienced regret exhibit a lower discount rate than those in the relief condition. Note that this distinct type of generosity differs significantly at the 14-day delay but not at the shortest and longest. It follows that regret can promote future altruism and intertemporal pro-social behavior, depending on the delay.

Neural processing of moral content reflects moral identity in 10-year-old children

Middle childhood seems to be crucial for the emergence of a moral identity, that is, an evaluative stance of how important it is for someone's sense of self to be moral. This study investigates the effects of moral identity on the neural processing of moral content in 10-year-old children. Participants were presented with scenes portraying prosocial and antisocial behavior, while electroencephalographic responses were collected. Analyses of event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that, for children with a strong moral identity, antisocial scenes elicited a greater early posterior negativity (EPN) as compared to prosocial scenes. Thus, for children with a strong moral identity, antisocial scenes capture more attentional resources than prosocial ones in early processing stages. In contrast to previous findings with adults, the implicit moral self-concept was not related to any ERP differences. Overall, the results show that, even in its developmental emergence, moral identity relates to the neurocognitive processing of third-party moral content. Together, the study supports the social-cognitive model of the development of moral identity a based on a chronical activation of moral schemas that guide a person's perception of the social world. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Aggression, Moral Disengagement and Empathy. A Longitudinal Study Within the Interpersonal Dynamics of Bullying

Moral disengagement and empathy have been linked to aggression in traditional bullying. A number of longitudinal studies have focused on how these variables predict aggressive behavior within the dynamics of bullying. However, no conclusive results have been produced as to whether aggressive behavior in bullying can predict lower levels of empathy, and to date, no studies have explored in depth the mediating role of moral disengagement strategies in this relationship, which is the aim of this study. A total of 1,810 students (51.0% girls; M_age = 14.50; SD = 1.05) completed a survey in three waves at 6-month intervals. The results showed that aggressive behavior in bullying at Time 1 was inversely related to affective and cognitive empathy at Time 3. Minimization of responsibility, distortion of consequences and dehumanizing mediated in the aggressive behavior exhibited by the bullying aggressors and in cognitive empathy, while cognitive restructuring and the distortion of consequences mediated in affective empathy. We discuss the impact on moral and emotional sensitivity of the continued aggression occurring in the interpersonal dynamics of bullying, as well as the relationship between certain strategies of moral disengagement and the different types of empathy. We also comment on the need to design intervention programs to address the lowering of moral criteria and empathy in young people and adolescents involved in traditional bullying.

How Does Social Currency Influence Prosocial Behavior? The Role of Collective Self-Esteem and Communication Network Heterogeneity

The social currency, the existing potential resource in the social networks and communities of an individual, has become more significant in the era of information technology. Meanwhile, the rapid development of Internet service, especially its application on mobile devices, brings many new contents of prosocial behaviors (PBs), which benefits both individuals and communities. Specifically, social currency plays a positive role in promoting PB, forming positive personalities, promoting positive social adaptation, and contributing to human survival and social development. However, the theoretical research in this field still lags far behind the development of practice, and the research on the impact of social currency on PB remains exceedingly scarce. Grounded in the social exchange theory (SET), the present study collects a total of 497 WeChat user questionnaires, constructs a model for the influence mechanism of social currency on PB, and tests the hypothesis through hierarchical regression. According to the results obtained, it was found that the social currency is positively associated with PB, and users with a more social currency are more likely to act prosocially on their own. The PB of an individual is then influenced by the social currency generated through collective self-esteem (CS) so that the perception of CS can be considered as a mediating variable. Moreover, the communication network heterogeneity (CNH) moderates the above relationship, and the degree of heterogeneity will have different effects on the relationship of CS. The obtained conclusions enrich the previous theoretical results of PB and provided new insights for social managers to enhance the prosocial-related behaviors for the group, organization, and society.

Emotional Intelligence and Executive Functions in the Prediction of Prosocial Behavior in High School Students. An InterDisciplinary Approach between Neuroscience and Education

One of the most analyzed variables in educational research is prosocial behavior, given its relevance and its application in favor of a culture of peace, the construction of solid democratic societies and the development of social justice. For this reason, it is necessary to extend the knowledge of predictors of prosocial behavior so that they can be transferred to teaching practice. The research reported here was carried out using a quantitative methodology through a survey, based on data collection instruments, whose data were treated statistically by means of descriptive, correlational and predictive analyses. The results obtained suggest that emotional intelligence has a strong predictive capacity for prosocial behavior while executive functions show a mild-moderate predictive behavior. In the conclusions and discussion, we provide a series of arguments on some of the results obtained in contrast with previous literature, as well as incorporating limitations of the study and prospects for future research.

Effectiveness of Group vs. Individual Therapy to Decrease Peer Problems and Increase Prosociality in Children

Emotional difficulties in children are often shown to be associated with peer problems and low prosocial behaviors. Super Skills for Life (SSL) is a transdiagnostic protocol for the prevention of emotional problems in children and has also obtained improvements of other comorbid symptoms. This study aimed at comparing the effects of SSL in reducing peer problems and increasing prosocial behaviors in children aged 8 to 12 years between the group and the individual modalities. For this purpose, 140 children (35% girls) received the program, 70 in group format and 70 in individual format, and were evaluated at the baseline, posttest, and after one year. Both modalities were effective in enhancing social relationships in children, although the individual modality showed more promising results. Children belonging to the individual modality group presented fewer peer problems (less social isolation and rejection, greater social acceptance, more friends) and greater prosocial behaviors (helping, empathy, kindness, and sharing) compared to children receiving the therapy in group modality, both in the short and in the long term. In conclusion, this study provides evidence of SSL protocol efficacy for improving children’s peer relationships and prosocial behaviors and encourages the implementation of transdiagnostic interventions in both clinical and educational settings.

A question of morals? The role of moral identity in support of the youth climate movement Fridays4Future

In the past year, an unprecedented climate movement has risen among European youth, so-called "Fridays4Future" (F4F). Thousands of pupils skip school every Friday to protest for better climate politics. The public debate on the protests contains highly mixed reactions, including praise as well as condemnation. Recent theoretical accounts propose that people's engagement in community service and actions towards a greater good could be related to their moral identity. Moral identity (MI) is defined as the extent to which being moral is important to the personal identity. The current preregistered study investigates the link between moral identity and participants' support for F4F in an online survey (N = 537). Results confirm the association between participants' moral identity and their support for F4F, with the internalization scale predicting passive forms of support and the symbolization scale predicting active forms of support. Additionally, risk perception was found to play an important role. Thus, this study confirms the role of moral identity in people's pro-environmental engagement and offers new insights in the context of an important and timely issue.

App-based learning for kindergarten children at home (Learning4Kids): study protocol for cohort 1 and the kindergarten assessments

Background

Children’s literacy and mathematical competencies are a critical platform for their successful functioning as individuals in society. However, many children, in particular those with low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds who may not receive the home support needed to develop to their full potential, are at risk of not reaching sufficient competence levels. The overall aim of this project is to develop innovative computer tablet applications (‘apps’) and test whether the apps support parents in the provision of high-quality home learning environments (HLEs) and impact positively on the short- and long-term development of children’s competencies.

Altogether, “App-based learning for kindergarten children at home” (Learning4Kids) is a 5-year longitudinal study funded by the EU and designed to assess the potential impact of a tablet-based family intervention on children’s learning, development, social inclusion and well-being.

Methods/design

This study uses a multi-method intervention approach and draws on expertise from psychology, education, informatics, and didactics to evaluate the effectiveness of learning apps and the intervention approach. It also exploits new technological possibilities afforded by tablet computers that are very common nowadays in families. Learning4Kids sets out to measure the quality of the HLE, children’s early mathematical, literacy, and cognitive competencies and their behaviour. Here, data will be gathered via standardized tests, observations, and parental and educator surveys and checklists. Data collection also includes the assessment of app usage times via mobile sensing. In cohort 1, 190 families are assigned to one of four groups. One business-as-usual group will only participate in the child assessments, whereas the three remaining groups are provided with tablets for about 10 months. Two intervention groups will receive mathematical or literacy learning apps as well as parental information about these topics and the tablet-control-group will receive similar apps and information that focus on general child development, but not on mathematics or literacy.

Discussion

Whilst offering substantive advances for the scientific fields of psychology and education, the Learning4Kids study also has broad societal implications. Improving young children’s learning trajectories is both a social and economic imperative as it equips them to achieve greater individual success and to contribute to societal prosperity.

Why do preschoolers perpetuate inequalities? Theoretical perspectives on inequity preferences in the face of emerging concerns for equality

Recent research has shown that preschool children tend to preferentially allocate resources to rich than to poor others. The findings that young children tend to perpetuate inequalities are puzzling given classical developmental theories that largely focused on the emergence of equality and equity in childhood. In this review, we first sketch the early ontogeny of fairness concerns before providing an overview on studies reporting perpetuation of inequality in young children. We review four classical theories (Piaget, Kohlberg, Damon, Social Domain Theory) and discuss how they would account for this phenomenon. We then introduce four recent theoretical models that directly speak to the underlying psychological processes; the affective preference model, the reciprocity-based strategic model, the numerical matching model, and the normative model. We highlight the key tenets of each model, their relation to other developmental processes, and the strength of the empirical evidence. From each model, we derive specific hypotheses. Finally, in an integrative section we discuss how the models might relate to each other, highlight connections to other research areas, and present avenues for future research.

Who's more generous than me? Children's self-evaluation of their prosociality in normative social comparisons

We examined the development of children's self-evaluation of their prosociality in normative social comparisons (with an average peer). Results suggest that when comparing themselves with an average other in the abstract (i.e., without reference to actual behavior), elementary school children (aged 6-12 years) demonstrated the better than average (BTA) effect of perceiving themselves as more prosocial than their average peer (Study 1). However, when they evaluated other children's prosociality (sharing), after experiencing an actual opportunity to share their endowment with others (Studies 2 and 3), the younger children (at first-grade level) exhibited the worse than average (WTA) effect in that they assumed that their peers would act more generously than themselves. Task difficulty predicted relative self-evaluations across all examined ages, such that greater difficulty was related to a lower BTA effect (or a greater WTA effect). However, whereas the older children used abstract difficulty perceptions to evaluate themselves relative to others, the younger children's evaluations were affected only by the difficulty that they themselves experienced. In all age groups, the BTA effect was driven mostly by participants who were above the mean in the extent of their sharing, whereas the WTA effect was driven by those who shared below the mean of their age group.